What is the fullness of the Spirit referred to by Paul in Ephesians 5:18? Often this text is read in terms of the empowerment of individual believers for discipleship and ministry, and this leads to difficulties in relating the text to its immediate literary context.

Ephesians is mainly concerned with the internal life of new Christian communities. Gombis focuses in his investigation on the function of the haustafel in Ephesians 5. Gombis argues that Paul is laying out a manifesto for the new humanity in the haustafel in 5:22-6:9.